bailiwick

noun
/ˈbeɪ.lɪ.wɪk/

Etymology

From bailie (“bailiff”) and wick (“dwelling”), from Old English wīc.

  1. inherited from wīc

Definitions

  1. The district within which a bailie or bailiff has jurisdiction.

    • The Bailiwick of Jersey.
  2. A person's concern or sphere of operations, their area of skill or authority.

    • I established the fairly well-understood pattern that affairs of state were not in my bailiwick.
    • Jack is full of these insights, thoughtful turns of phrase from a character whose perpetual struggle between wastrel and righteous is all too familiar a bailiwick for the universal insecurities of the human condition.
    • This “feminist chortling” (as she calls it) about the disgraced royal is right in the bailiwick of the writer who virtually invented the term mansplaining.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for bailiwick. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA